ARTSBEAT; A Literary Mismatch? Paulo Coelho Takes On James Joyce

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER

Published: August 10, 2012

put on trial for obscenity and subjected to reckless overcorrection of its punctuation. But now the novel, widely considered one of the greatest works of the 20th century, has suffered perhaps its gravest indignity yet: being insulted by Paulo Coelho.In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, Mr. Coelho, whose mystical novels including "The Alchemist" have sold a reported 140 million copies worldwide, declared that Joyce had damaged the 20th century novel by reducing it to "pure style."">

Since its publication in 1922, James Joyce's "Ulysses" has been put on trial for obscenity and subjected to reckless overcorrection of its punctuation. But now the novel, widely considered one of the greatest works of the 20th century, has suffered perhaps its gravest indignity yet: being insulted by Paulo Coelho.In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, Mr. Coelho, whose mystical novels including "The Alchemist" have sold a reported 140 million copies worldwide, declared that Joyce had damaged the 20th century novel by reducing it to "pure style."

"There is nothing there," Mr. Coelho said. "If you dissect 'Ulysses,' it gives you a tweet." He also suggested he was the superior modern writer: "I am modern because I make the difficult seem easy, and so I can communicate with the world."

Mr. Coelho, whom the article described as being online "almost 24 hours a day," also boasted of his social media prowess, declaring, "Twitter is my bar. I sit at the counter and listen to the conversations, starting others, feeling the atmosphere."

But within hours some corners of the bar had turned distinctly against him. "Coelho is, of course, entitled to his dumb opinion," Stuart Kelly wrote in a much re-tweeted post on the Guardian's books blog, "just as I am entitled to think Coelho's work is a nauseous broth of egomania and snake-oil mysticism with slightly less intellect, empathy and verbal dexterity than the week-old camembert I threw out yesterday."

Mr. Coelho found some defenders among his more than five million Twitter followers. The author of "Ulysses," which was tweeted in its entirety on Bloomsday in 2011, was not available for comment, however. He died in 1941, while the feed @jamesjoyce_, which has 1,500 followers, fell silent last December after posting the words (taken from "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man") "invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails."

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

PHOTOS

put on trial for obscenity and subjected to reckless overcorrection of its punctuation. But now the novel, widely considered one of the greatest works of the 20th century, has suffered perhaps its gravest indignity yet: being insulted by Paulo Coelho.In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, Mr. Coelho, whose mystical novels including "The Alchemist" have sold a reported 140 million copies worldwide, declared that Joyce had damaged the 20th century novel by reducing it to "pure style."">